Sergey Lavrov: “The fact that our colleagues in Washington are open to continuing an honest and mutually respectful conversation is encouraging”

Photo: MFA

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s answer to a media question.

Question: On July 31, in an interview with Fox Radio, Marco Rubio talked about continuing to work with Russia. He mentioned recent contacts and conversations held in the hope of arriving at an understanding on ways to achieving peace. However, he said that so far, the United States does not see any progress along this track. What could you say in this regard?

Sergey Lavrov: It is true that we have regular contacts with our American colleagues at various levels, including telephone conversations between our presidents, contacts between Marco Rubio and me, and through United States Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. The fact that the current US administration has revived direct dialogue is totally consistent with normal diplomatic practice, while Joe Biden’s refusal to abide by it defied common sense. Moscow and Washington have been engaged in a meaningful discussion on the Ukraine topic, which has been quite useful and effective. It is thanks to President Donald Trump’s insistence that the Kiev regime accepted our proposal to resume the Istanbul talks.

Three rounds of talks have already taken place. Apart from important humanitarian agreements, we came forward with a proposal to establish working groups on political and military matters. This could be a major step towards a lasting agreement, just as the President of Russia said on August 1 during his meeting with Alexander Lukashenko in Valaam.

We are waiting for Kiev to provide a meaningful response. So far, all we have are Zelensky’s conflicting statements ranging from an immediate truce without any preconditions while calling on the West to use this truce to deliver more weapons to Ukraine, to replacing the Istanbul format with a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin. He goes as far as demanding that the West delivers on the promise of changing the Russian leadership. He can switch from one position to the without 24 hours or every other day. Therefore, I suggest that anyone interested in advancing the settlement process should take this obvious personality disorder into account.

So far, the progress boils down to the fact that our American colleagues have come to realise the existing reality and try taking into account the root causes of the crisis, which sets them apart from the aggressive Russia-hating attitude of the Europeans. Vladimir Putin has set forth these causes in great detail many times, including the need to respect the vote by the people of Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya following the 2014 government coup. Its leaders designated these people as inhuman and terrorists. Europeans have been screaming about dragging Ukraine into NATO and preparing for war with Russia, while Marco Rubio has recently reaffirmed his commitment to a responsible attitude by making it clear that a direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia should never happen. We fully agree with this position. This position also results from an understanding we have been able to reach as part of the Russia-US dialogue.

In order to claim progress in addressing the root causes of the crisis, there is a need to get the record straight regarding the positions of all the Kiev regime’s patrons regarding what the Ukrainian regime does to cancel and do away with everything Russian, be it the Russian language, education, culture, history, memory, or the ban on the canonical Orthodox faith. Apart from Ukraine, you will not find any other country in the entire world to enact an official ban on any language. We are certain that the United States has a sincere interest in ensuring that human rights and the rights of ethnic minorities are respected, which is not the case for many hypocrites in the European Union. This way, the United States could deliver an unbiased assessment of this situation. This would be a major step forward.

The fact that our colleagues in Washington are open to continuing an honest and mutually respectful conversation is also encouraging, since it takes into account the need to make the Ukraine settlement part of an effort to promote pan-European security based on a balance of legitimate interests of all the countries involved in this process. Vladimir Putin reaffirmed that Russia is ready to launch this conversation while talking to the media in Valaam on August 1.

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